‘You do that. I’ll have my own celebration with you tomorrow.’
He let his tongue play around the word celebration, and there was no quick comeback.
‘Ella?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I can hear you blushing.’
* * *
‘Someone’s at the door, Mum. Didn’t you hear the knocking?’ Sam said, rubbing his eyes. He’d mucked around with her for a while with the music in the lounge, but he’d called it quits about twenty minutes ago, when she’d finally turned the music down.
‘At the door? Are you sure? I didn’t hear anything.’
‘Pretty sure.’
Ella turned the music so far down it was pretty much off. She walked to the front window and pulled the curtain aside. Streetlights left yellow reflections flooding the bitumen. The house across the road still had its lights on. Most of the others were off.
‘There’s no one there now, Sam.’
‘Something woke me up.’ Sam ambled to the front door in his pyjamas, switched the porch light on, turned the deadlock and opened the door.
‘There’s a box out here, Mum.’
‘What sort of box?’ Was it a prank? Kids playing games. ‘Don’t open it. It could be a flour bomb or something.’
‘What’s a flour bomb?’
Ella ignored the question. ‘How big is the box?’
‘Head-sized maybe.’
‘Yuck, Sammy.’
The screen door squeaked wider. Ella was almost at the door when Sam picked up the box.
‘It’s not too heavy,’ he said. ‘It’s got your name on it.’
Ella held the door for him and Sam brought the box inside as Ella closed and locked the front door.
The box was square, and … well, big enough to hold a severed head. Maybe two severed heads if they squashed in a bit. And yes, it had Ella’s name on it.
Sam put the thing on the kitchen counter and Ella went for the scissors, cutting sticky-tape out of her way.
She lifted one flap and then the other. There was newspaper packed around something, and Sam, wide awake now, fought through the paper.
The moment Sam got through to the mirrored surface, Ella knew what it was. Tears filled her eyes as she lifted the thing out.
‘What is it, Mum?’ Sam said.
‘It’s a mirror ball.’
‘What’s a mirror ball?’
‘It reflects light everywhere. It’s a disco ball. For dancing.’
‘How do we set it up?’
‘I’ll show you,’ Ella said, although that might be a problem. The ceiling in the rental house wasn’t high, and Ella doubted the landlord would appreciate it if she started banging hooks in the ceiling.
‘Who’s it from?’ He was peering into the bottom of the box, and his hand came out with a card. ‘This is for you too.’
Ella took the envelope from Sam and opened the note inside, flattening out the paper with her fingers.
It said:
Congratulations, Hot Stuff.
Love, Mr Simple.
CHAPTER
24
‘So how does a bloke get his hands on a mirror ball at eight o’clock at night?’ Ella asked Jake the next day, after Ollie and Jake’s dog, Jess, had stopped jumping all about the car, and Sam had run off into the house with the other boy.
‘Good morning,’ Jake said, bending low to kiss her lips. ‘Congratulations in person.’
Ella glanced after Sam. Her son was gone, so he didn’t see the kiss. ‘Thank you.’
‘Did you put it up?’
‘I did. Sam and I had a great time. I hung it over a beam on the back verandah.’
‘I’ve got a mate who runs this dancing in the dark thing every Wednesday night in the meeting room at the back of the bowling club. I called her.’
‘Dancing in the dark?’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. They could be baying at the moon up there for all I know, but music is involved and they don’t put the lights on, and Maz, that’s my friend Maria, is the only person I know who’d have a mirror ball I could borrow at short notice.’
‘You keep using that word borrow, Jake,’ Ella said. ‘Are you trying to tell me I’ve got to give it back?’
‘I can buy you another one.’
‘When I sell your nanna’s house?’
His face changed, only a flicker but it was there. ‘Maybe. Come on, come inside and put your stuff down. Make yourself at home.’
* * *
Ella could have kidded herself that her interest in Jake Honeychurch’s family homestead was purely business—here she was, a real estate professional in one of the iconic homesteads of the region—but Ella wasn’t one for kidding herself. There was nothing remotely professional about the way she checked out Jake’s bachelor pad. This was purely personal, all the way.
He got big ticks on housekeeping, for starters.
‘Don’t think it always looks like this,’ Jake said, waving his hand at the neat and tidy kitchen.
‘Really? That’s a bummer,’ Ella said, letting a fake frown weigh the corners of her mouth.
‘Don’t believe him, Ella,’ Nita Kinworth said, stopping briefly in the doorway, carrying a bunch of folded linen. ‘He doesn’t need me. He really doesn’t.’
Jake took a few strides to reach the older woman and hugged her almost off her feet. ‘I do, I do. Don’t you think you’re ever getting away.’
Nita batted his arms. ‘Get out, you silly bugger, before you make me spill all my clean towels on this dirty floor. I haven’t vacuumed.’
Privately, Ella’d be happy to eat soup off that so-called dirty floor.
Movement in a corner caught her eye, a flash of white feathers. Ella stepped towards Percy’s cage. ‘Is it okay to take him out?’ she asked Jake.
‘Nita?’
‘Laundry door is shut. I learned my lesson,’ the cleaner confirmed.
Ella opened the cage door and took Percy out, putting him to her shoulder where he hopped, turned and perched happily, poking his beak in her hair near her ear.
‘That tickles,’ she said, smoothing the soft curve of feathers where the back of his head met his wings. ‘Sam will come see you later.’
The two boys had rushed off for helmets and a double-dink on one of the quad bikes, promising to take it easy as they crashed out of the back door.
Ella turned her attention from the cockatiel to the house.
‘I love the kitchen table,’ she said to Jake, running her
